Yes, slowpoke is slow. It's been a week now, but I wanted to do this because it kind of boomerangs back to me every now and then (also, I couldn't think of a verse that would suffice - I would have wanted to give something of myself, but it was not to be, and after a week of dallying I decided that a better verse by someone else would suffice).
I'm sure everyone's read someone's article on this already, so I will not sum up the life of Nelson Mandela here, and thusly I will try to be succinct. Mandela was, in my opinion, a truly great man - a person who genuinely believed in what he stood for, and stood for it to the end. Mandela was a force of peace, a lesson in forgiving and humility to all of mankind. To each is their time, and his was now. My only wish is that I could have met him in person. And for Nelson Mandela, if anyone ever, this verse of John Donne is most appropriate. You will be sorely missed.
No man
is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a
part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the
less,
as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy
friend's or of thine own were;
any man's death diminishes me, because I
am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the
bell tolls;
I went to see the new Thor movie on it's local premiere, that being last Wednesday. Of course, a post like this would be preferable without spoilers, so I'll talk about that stuff later. This post will be a succint "yays and nays" type of a post.
Thor: The Dark World is good. I liked it better than the first Thor movie, although it was one of the better superhero movies that came out back in 2011. The Dark World improves on the first movie in many places, especially visually and thematically in many places. Where TDW fails in respect to it's predecessor, interestingly enough, is the plot.
The cover art actually tells a lot about the movie. There's a lot of everything that doesn't really add up to a whole.
Thor: The Dark World is pretty, and it is pretty in a good way. The visualization of Asgard (and the other Nine Realms) has been, in my opinion, honed to a fine point. The feel of Asgard is fascinating, as is it's look. A lot of the jokes in TDW are funny, in what is now pretty much a standing trope in Marvel superhero movies. As the Marvel universe has had enough big screen appearances to have a good backdrop on it's own, even without the comics, The Dark World has a lot of backround material to fall back to, which it uses scarcely but effectively.
The characters are good - Thor's still Thor, Odin's still old, the Three Heroes are still heroic, Loki will still elicit squeals from the ladies... My two favorite displays of the movie, however, come from Idris Elba as Heimdal and Rene Russo as Frigga. Frigga is perhaps the best character in the movie, becoming during the movie, in my opinion, the scifi viking queen that the backdrop gives her the possibility to be.
While the movie is good, it has one largish drawback that often troubles the superhero movies. It outshadows it's own plot. It has a plot device, thrown in at the very start, and a looming bad guy. Then it trips over itself to get in all the guys that were in previously, everyone that someone might have liked, and jumps through hoops to play with the whole Yggdrassil - Nine Realms - connected worlds mumbo jumbo that's actually always been one of the more stupid parts of the Marvel Thor mythos. It all ends in a bit of a jumble, with Asgard sequences being rather awesome since the visual and style elements have been honed to a fine point. These are cut with drab sequences back on Earth, a few cuts here and there to the other nine realms, and it's all tied together by this huge, looming threat to end all of creation. Just like always.
Thor: The Dark World is pretty, from time to time witty, funny and engaging. It is, however, plotwise rather hollow. If you like superhero movies, I suggest watching it, but don't expect to be too surprised at any point. The Dark World is, apart from it's direction (which I think was mostly rather good, an astounding show from Alan Taylor who's mostly been doing tv series until now) and visuals, a cut and dry superhero movie. It's good, but it isn't astounding, it isn't mindblowing, it's nothing to write home about. I suggest watching it, but don't expect a spectacle.
I will use two case examples of visualized media to show where character building has failed in the new age bloody fantasy mindset that has gripped the world as of late.
My examples will be HBO's Game of Thrones, a TV adaptation of George R. R. Martin's novels, and the anime Shingeki no Kyojin or Attack on Titan, an adaptation of Hajime Isayama's manga. There will be spoilers, some more and some less heavy, so if you don't wish to be spoiled, stop reading after the next three paragraphs. There is an ending chapter at the very bottom of this post as well, with no spoilers..
Series with strong, well-rounded support casts are usually viewed as good. Real characters around the main cast make the story feel more real, better somehow. It makes sense: it's nice have people instead of stock figures around. You see this in well written books as well - you find out about the people around the main character(s) as well, because they are interesting too: they're people, just like the protagonist.
Now, both Shingeki and GoT are notorious for killing people. Practically all of them. One might think this puts a damper on the well-rounded supporting cast, since they'll spend most of their tome dead. This is partially wronk. In the print versions (books and manga) this works rather well: you meet a character, they're fleshed out over tens or hundreds of pages, they develop a persona. When they are killed, you feel a loss for their passing. It's sort of like someone you know, and then they're dead. In the visualized versions, however, the supporting cast are just so much cannon fodder.
From an analytical viewpoint, I understand what's happening. GoT is supposed to be gruesome: the whole point of the "King Wars" is that everyone is just flesh and blood, and if you fail once, that's it. Shingeki, on the other hand, is supposed to be hopeless - human kind stand no chance against the titans. And as I said, in the written stories (Martin's books and, so I've heard, the Attack on Titan light novel) this works splendidly. The manga does an ok job at this. But the visualized media ends up feeling a bit slapstick.
BE WARNED: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING SPOILER ZONE
Sadly, these pieces do not stand up to their written counterparts. With Shingeki no Kyojin, the problem lies a bit in the writing: the characters feel stock. At the beginning it doesn't matter that much: Armin's squad at Trost, all of the nameless Guard members, even Marco's deaths seem to actually carry a bit of weight, but they feel kind of pointless. As the story progresses, however, it gets more and more ridiculous. The underlining of humanity's inability to fight the titans is made abundantly clear in the Expedition Beyond the Walls arc, where the Female Titan rips apart most of the Scout Legion. To drive the point home, she eventually rips apart most of the senior Scouts, Günther, Erd, Petra, and Auruo.
At this point, it trips over itself into the land of ridiculous. All of this is supposed to show the difference in power, but it feels needless. All we've learned during the anime about Captain Levi's squad is that they're supposed to be really good, then we see them do it for about 40 seconds, and then they die. The people dying could just as well be cardboard cut outs at this point, because everybody seems to die anyway. Both the characters and their deaths have lost their meaning, because the visual media doesn't have the time (or doesn't take the effort) to establish them.
The same problem lies with the Game of Thrones series. In the books, which are rather long, we get to know everybody rather well. In the series, people just end up dying one or two episodes up the road, with no real personality shown. As season three rolled about, a video was made that summarized the way people die in GoT rather well. While the event itself and the people that die in it are significant, it feels lackluster in the series, because it needs to chop up stuff so much that, again, everybody's dying all the time. Here is the video in question.
THERE BE NO MORE SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ONWARDS
After all this rant, I get to my point. I feel that killing actual characters should be meaningful, even if it is to make the point of bloody war or hopelessness. If you kill one, or even five, to prove that point, that's rather fine. But if all of your characters end up dying because of the same thing (not so much true in GoT, just rather invisible in the tv series), the edge is lost. I no longer feel sorrow, or hopelessness, when people die in these two series. I'm exasperated. I don't care. The plot is dimmed because the deaths feel more the point than the plot, especially when they're often heavily underlined and at worst captioned, bolded and colored as well.
I like both of these series, but they just seem to be unable to build characters out visually, and end up the worse for it.
Biggest thing this week in gamer geek news has been this: League of Legends is an official sports in the USA. This is a stepping stone to the gamer world, a milestone. And it is pretty cool - the boundaries between online and offline are being torn down. You don't need to be in top physical condition to be an athlete - you can be something else entirely.
So, what else has been going on this year, concerning different kinds of geeks? Biggest Hollywood blockbusters this year: a movie about mechas thrashing it out and comic movies - Pacific Rim, Man of Steel and Iron Man 3 cropping up top. Everyone is trying to make the next Avengers movie. Games and comics are in. The places to be are E3, ComiCon, Playstation 4 and Xbox One launch events. Geeks are the popular culture.
What about Finland? Anime conventions are selling out, the Finnish Twitter is dominated by the anime and manga culture, and globalism makes all of what's happening elsewhere reflect here as well. What does all of this roll into, then, for geeks and geek culture?
We are mainstream. We won. Except we didn't.
Most of geek culture never wanted to be mainstream. It means we have the upper hand - we're no longer the epitome of a guy with coke bottle glasses that gets the stuffing beat out of him for his lunch money. We have to take responsibility now, instead of just shielding away behind the "we're the minority, everybody hates us" line. For the first time since the rise of geek culture, we would need to look at ourselves and see what's wrong on our side of the fence. And that doesn't come easy.
Sexism. Racism. Hateful slurs, hetero dominance, gay fear, oppression of belief. Not funny, eh? Log into almost any public game lobby, anonymous (or half-anonymous) online forum or any other public online agora where geeks compile and look around. We are the haters now, and have always been.It simply shows now, when we cannot shield behind being the bullied ones. This needs to stop. Yes, juvenile boys will be boys. No, we shouldn't feed the trolls. But that doesn't mean its ok, should be ok or will be ok to be a jerk to someone else, about anythingm, ever. The only way geek culture will "mature" is if we make it. If we, the ones who were the outcasts back in the 80's or the 90's, are actually at the center of what geek culture is, the change needs to begin with us. All of us.
We can't go around yelling "Everyone just hates us, boo hoo hoo!" anymore at every turn - we need to take responsibility for what happens on our turf. I wrote about games (specifically the newest Hitman game) in this regard about a year ago, and the point still stands. We can't do this shit. Not before, not ever, but especially not now. If we are the mainstream, we have the chance to be a better mainstream than it has ever been. But we need to start the change. We need to be better, not wait for the world to change. Man up, and take responsibility. Geekdom is no longer a hiding place. Get out there and change the world.
Edit: Looks like Moviebob said pretty much the same thing and more in a Big Picture episode a few weeks back. Go check it out at The Escapist.
About a week ago there was the horrible event of bombings at the Boston Marathon start line, that was followed by at least as horrible shootings and bombings during the rest of the week. Lives were lost, and we should reflect on what happened to be able to prevent such events from happening again. What I'm more worried about is the aftermath around the possible attackers and the responses that the chase and apprehension have evoked.
Situations like this should not be taken lightly. Bombings and random shootings are horrible and should be taken with all the seriousness. But what I was really taken aback by was the public and political response after the alleged still living attacker was caught (the highlighting there is important, so keep that in mind.)
I'm not taking a stand about whether or not Tsarnaev is guilty, there are professionals and such that will find out and decide that later, hopefully without bias or rancor. What was wrong, almost inhuman, to me, was the way people and the Republican party have reacted. People practically paraded out on the streets when the alleged attacker was caught - sure, he might have been guilty, but it's not yet sure, and there are some shady parts there. People all but whooped with bloodlust when he had been savagely beaten and was in a critical state, because it was felt that he deserved it.
A person that might have done horrible things deserved every imaginable deed of violence directed towards him. A person, a human being, that might have done something. Yes, what happened was horrible and yes, if he did it he should be convicted for it - convicted, not dragged through the streets like a rabid animal. The Republican party is calling for him to be treated as a non-American combatant - basically denying him all the basic human rights.
I understand that people, as a normal response to being in fear for a week, feel relief after they're told that the situation has been resolved. I understand that the relief might bubble out as joy, anger or other strong feelings that are directed in rather random directions. I refuse to understand the bloodlust and rancor people feel towards an alleged attacker. Even if he was the confirmed attacker, my god, would be butcher him like the Archbishop of Paris?
I understand the anger, the frustration of inaction and inability, the rage and sadness. I don't want to trod on anyone's loss. What happened was horrible, it was a tragedy beyond scope. But oh, humanity, a person - even after possibly committing horrid deeds - is a person, a human being, and should be treated as such. We are no longer savages, so let there be some humanity in how we act.
When I'm sick, I always wish I was smaller. Not necessarily younger, but smaller. This would be because I get immense phantom pains when I'm sick, especially when I have a fever. It begins at the small of my back, an ache somewhere below the kidneys. When the fever rises a bit, the ache moves to the limbs: forearms, fingers and legs.
And, to top it all off, when the fever rises high enough, the pain moves to the skin. All of my skin burns, especially when touched. Clothes hurt, sitting hurts, showering hurts. And that's when I wish I was smaller, mostly because it would be nicer if the pain was... supressed, affecting a smaller area. If I was smaller, there would be less of me that could hurt.
Well, the whole of Finland seems to be abuzz of foxfires, also known as aurora borealis or northern lights. I might as well jump in on the band wagon as it rolls by, so here are a few pictures from Jyväskylä.
It is a spectacular view, I must admit, and totally worth watching. I
only saw greens tonight, but there's been a few pictures of purple tones
up in the sky as well. The light show is still on in some places, so go
check them out if you have the time.
